Loose Leaf Notes

This is the time of year that the screens go back up on our windows and the porch picnic table gets covered with a red and white checkered table cloth. It’s also the time of year when I can’t keep my hands clean. The red clay of Virginia outlines my cuticles, and my nails are jagged and lopped off in all different shapes and sizes, a sure sign that the work of gardening is well under way.
During the week, I sometimes go in and out of town a couple of times a day, taking my foster care resident to and from activities. I get cleaned up and put on my “town clothes” before going out. But on this particular day driving to town with my hands on the steering wheel, I noticed they were really dirty, and I was shocked. The lighting in my bathroom can’t compare with broad daylight, I figured. Not only were my cuticles lined with dirt, but the patterns in my skin were as well, and whole sections of my hands were streaked with what looked like dried mud. I used soap, but obviously, I missed some spots. It reminded me of the way I put on sunscreen, too little and erratically, which invariably leads to an uneven splotchy sunburn.
I was headed for the local print shop to get “The Boston Globe” feature about “The Jim and Dan Stories” laminated, because the new independent book store in Blacksburg is carrying my books, and I like to include a copy of the Globe story as part of the display.
Waiting for the machine to laminate, it wasn’t convenient to sit on my hands or even keep them in my pockets. Pulling out my wallet to pay, I noticed a friend at the copy machine who I knew as an avid gardener, and so, I began to establish my alibi.
“Are your hands as dirty as mine?” I smiled and asked, holding one of them up.
He came over closer to inspect and answered, sympathetically, “Yeah, I wish they made garden gloves that were comfortable.”
“I never liked barrier methods (I was thinking of birth control),” but I didn’t say that out loud because there were people in the store I didn’t know. Holding back a laugh, I answered only, “I don’t wear gloves. I need to feel the soil in my hands.”
Later, at the plant nursery, I felt comfortable among peers, but I knew that my hands were probably the dirtiest, even there. I made it home without any serious embarrassments. Finally, I can give my hands a good scrubbing; you would think. But no…I headed straight for the garden to reclaim my asparagus patch and to cut the raspberry brambles back.
You can now add a few new bloody scratches to the dirty hand description above.
My husband has tools
for digging potatoes
but I like to use my hands
Reaching down deep
into the musty dark soil
mounded up like swollen bellies
I feel around for the curve of their bodies
wiggle them loose like teeth
Born into my hand
without the sharp edge of a shovel
more than twins
more than quintuplets…
Excerpt of “A Sweet Labor” from Muses Like Moonlight.